It was a two-day off-site workshop in Adelaide in May 2014 when the essential elements of what would become the $4.7 billion robo-debt disaster first were hatched.

Attending the workshop were the leaders of the 3000-strong compliance and risk branch of the Human Services Department. Known to the outside world as Centrelink, Human Services oversaw about 40 per cent of the entire federal budget. The compliance branch was the largest in the national government, overseeing $166 billion dispensed via over 200 million interactions that year.